It was Eric’s voice which broke the silence. “May be I need to spent some time alone here”. “Ok I will stay down stairs…” came an immediate reply from Gayle. He went downstairs.

Eric was left all alone. It seemed to him that he had nothing to feel good about. His friends had turned against him. His 1st semester exam result has been devastating. The only question that kept ringing in his head was “What next?”. He had no answers.

“Maybe things were never to go like this” he thought. But even then he felt useless. Desperation slowly conquered over him. In the darkness of night he could feel all his nightmares solidifying around him, taking forms of ghosts and ghouls and closing on him from all sides. He closed his eyes. The next moment he was down his memory lane in the great battle field of his mind but even there he stood cornered by the devils that have bred inside him.

He was alone and they were two many in number. He was afraid of them. But tonight he won’t run away them. He would face them. However he frightened. He was alone. “What kind of battle is this?” he questioned himself. “It’s the battle that you deserve” thundered one devil.

Suddenly a voice came from behind him. “It’s the battle that you win”. Someone kept a hand on his back and said “We are with you.” He turned back and was rejoyced to see his own army standing behind him. But who were these soldiers? They were none other than his virtues. Every little virtue in him which the world had ignored stood their as strong as any mortal has ever stood in a battle field.

It a very pleasant moment when all our dreams tend to come true in front of our eyes. Such tales are recorded in the sands of time and told as stories of victory to many a people.

However there are moments when our worst nightmares materialise in front of us and tend to swallow us into the eternal darkness of despair, regret and so gloomy solitude does conquer us that we fail to understand that even the darkest cloud cannot hide sun forever. Such moments make untold takes.

That night the full moon shimmered in the sky, and with it ,the stars and the roof tops of the houses also shimmered and with them the tiny tear droplets from Eric’s eyes shimmered too.

Eric and Gayle sat on one such shimmering roof top. As the sparkle of the sky and glistening stardust embraced them, Eric talked how he had been insulted and rebuked by some of his friends or rather close friends. He only wanted to help them but how lies and betrayals have ended up in proving him a selfish personality and a subject of abusive gossip over his friends.

Unpredictability is the very nature of the universe where we live. Most people easily forget the great amount of help you have offered them previously. They blame you to hide their own mistakes. They think making the world unaware of their guilt would make their miserable lives any better.

But all this would not bring even a hint of a smile upon Eric’s face. Gayle, his best friend, knew this better than anyone else. So he kept quite. At times Eric would narrate few untold tales with a thin voice as the mighty benevolent sky showered sparkling stardust over them…